Tag Archives: Tigers

25 Jul

clearing the bases

Jordan Westburg is on the board. The ex-Mississippi State standout hit MLB career home run No. 1 on Monday, helping Baltimore beat Philadelphia 3-2 in a big interleague series. Westburg is batting .266 in 20 games; he has 60 minor league homers on hs ledger. … Also going yard for the first time in the big leagues was former Biloxi Shuckers standout Sal Frelick, whose blast in his third MLB game helped Milwaukee beat Cincinnati 3-2 in a big National League Central contest. … Coincidentally, those homers came on the same day as Will Verdung’s first as a pro; the Itawamba Community College alum, a recent draftee, went deep in his debut for Atlanta’s rookie club (see previous post). … And in keeping with that theme, South Panola High product Emaarion Boyd hit his first pro homer on Sunday for Philadelphia’s Low-Class A Clearwater team. A 2022 draftee, the 177-pound Boyd, 19, leads the Florida State League in steals with 41. … Jacob Gonzalez and Calvin Harris, both drafted out of Ole Miss by the Chicago White Sox, made their pro debuts on Monday in the Arizona Complex League. Gonzalez started at shortstop and went 0-for-1 with two walks; Harris started at catcher and went 1-for-3. … All 14 players drafted out of the state this year have signed. Tupelo High’s Johnathan Rogers, a 6-foot-3 right-hander picked in Round 20, has inked with Detroit, though mlb.com’s draft tracker doesn’t indicate the bonus. … In Monday’s huge American League West clash between Texas and Houston, ex-MSU star Nathaniel Lowe went 1-for-3 with two walks, two runs and an RBI but the first-place Rangers fell to the Astros 10-9 at Minute Maid Park. Former Ole Miss star Grae Kessinger, a backup infielder, did not play for Houston, which closed to within 2 games of the division lead. … DeSoto Central High alum and current Braves star Austin Riley earned NL player of the week honors after smacking six homers and driving in 16 runs last week. Riley tied a franchise record with homers in five straight games. … Ole Miss product Lance Lynn is listed in an mlb.com article as one of the 17 players most likely to be traded before the Aug. 1 deadline. The veteran pitcher, 36, has had a rough season with the White Sox. … Detroit has announced that former Madison Central standout Spencer Turnbull, on the injured list since May 6, will make a rehab start tonight and another Sunday in A-ball. Turnbull, coming back from 2021 Tommy John surgery, was having a rough time before injuring his neck.

09 Jul

whatever happened to …

Trent Giambrone, the former Delta State standout, is having a standout season as the shortstop and leadoff batter for the York Revolution of the independent Atlantic League. Giambrone, 29, is batting .280 with 13 homers and 48 RBIs in what is his eighth professional season. He put up a 2-for-4 on Saturday, driving in a pair of runs for the Revolution in a 10-7 win against Lexington. Giambrone, listed at 5 feet 8, 175 pounds, defied the odds as a 25th-round draft pick by reaching the big leagues with the Chicago Cubs in 2021. He is one of nine DSU alums to play in the majors. He got a pinch single in his first at-bat and was 2-for-13 overall as a September call-up. He went back to the minors in 2022 and became a free agent at season’s end, signing with York this spring. Giambrone batted .351 over two years at DSU but didn’t replicate that success in the minors (.231 career). However, he appears to have found a happy place in the Atlantic League, a good quality loop where several Mississippians are currently playing. P.S. Ole Miss product Thomas Dillard, playing for Lexington on Saturday, went 3-for-4 with two doubles and his league-best 22nd home run (see previous post). … Tim Elko, another ex-Rebels star, put up a 3-for-4 with a triple and four RBIs for High-Class A Winston-Salem in the White Sox’s organization. In 10 games at this level, Elko — a ’22 draftee — is batting .308 with a homer and eight RBIs. Half of his 12 hits are extra-base knocks. … Former Biloxi High standout Colt Keith, Detroit’s No. 1 prospect (per mlb.com), went 1-for-1 with a walk in Saturday’s All-Star Futures Game in Seattle. Keith is batting .335 with 16 homers and 57 RBIs between Double-A and Triple-A this season. … The Tigers’ previous no-hitter before Saturday’s combo job was thrown by Madison Central High product Spencer Turnbull on May 18, 2021, at Seattle. Turnbull, who missed all of the 2022 season following Tommy John surgery, is back on the injured list now (neck injury) but is throwing off a mound. He is 1-4 with a 7.26 ERA in seven starts this year.

01 Jul

bravissimo

Before the curtain fell on June, a handful of Mississippians delivered performances worthy of raucous applause. Bidding for a spot on the National League All-Star team, Justin Steele — the lefty from Lucedale — pitched 6 1/3 shutout innings for the Chicago Cubs in a 10-1 win Friday against Cleveland. Steele is 9-2 with a 2.43 ERA, tied for second-most wins in the NL and tops in ERA. He should be in Seattle, for sure. … Austin Riley, the slugger from Southaven, went 3-for-5 with his 15th home run in Atlanta’s 16-4 demolition of Miami, its closest pursuer in the NL East. Riley, batting .270 with 43 RBIs, 55 runs and a .459 slugging percentage, was a finalist at third base in the All-Star voting and deserves a spot on the roster as a reserve. It would also be great to see him in the Home Run Derby. … Down in the minors, ex-Southern Miss star Matt Wallner continues to build his case for a return to the big leagues with Minnesota. He went 3-for-5 with a single, double and triple for Triple-A St. Paul a day after hitting two home runs for the Saints. He is at .307 with 11 homers and 42 RBIs. Sent down on May 29 — despite getting seven hits in a four-game stretch for the Twins — Wallner hit .320 with five bombs in June for St. Paul. … Colt Keith, the former Biloxi High star, hit a 473-foot home run for Triple-A Toledo and is 7-for-13 in three games since Detroit promoted him from Double-A. The 21-year-old lefty-hitting third baseman is ticketed to play in the All-Star Futures Game on July 8 in Seattle. … Ex-Mississippi State standout Hunter Stovall, quietly having a nice year for Triple-A Albuquerque, delivered a walk-off hit for the Isotopes in a 4-3 win against El Paso. Stovall, a sixth-year pro, is batting .281 with six homers and 26 RBIs for Colorado’s top farm club. … In Low-Class A, former South Panola High standout Emaarion Boyd went 2-for-4 with three runs, two walks and a stolen base — his 39th of the year — in a win for Clearwater. The Philadelphia prospect is batting .276 (.400 OBP) with 46 runs in 52 games in his first full pro season.

28 Jun

small steps

The good news on Brandon Woodruff is that the Mississippi State alum threw a 25-pitch bullpen session on Tuesday following a similar session on Saturday. What remains uncertain is when the 30-year-old right-hander might come off the injured list and rejoin the Milwaukee rotation. “I have to get to a certain point where I get the pitch count up,” the ex-Wheeler High star told mlb.com. “Once I get to live BPs, that determines the speed of how this thing will go.” So, maybe late July? Woodruff has been out since April 11 with a shoulder injury. He had a 0.79 ERA in his two starts of 2023. The Brewers are second in the soft National League Central, a half-game back of Cincinnati, but almost certainly need a healthy Woodruff to stay in playoff contention. He is a two-time All-Star who is 42-25 with a 3.14 ERA since he arrived in the majors in 2017. He has a 3.18 ERA in eight postseason appearances from 2018-21. … Madison Central alum Spencer Turnbull (neck injury) has begun throwing sessions but no timetable has been reported for his potential return to Detroit. After missing all of 2022 following Tommy John surgery, he was 1-4, 7.26, this season before being shut down on May 13. P.S. Ole Miss product James McArthur, called up by Kansas City on June 24, has yet to make his MLB debut. The 6-foot-7 righty had a 4.87 ERA at Triple-A Omaha after being acquired in a trade with Philadelphia. … Former Biloxi High star Colt Keith is expected to make his Triple-A debut today for Toledo (Detroit system) at Columbus. … Ex-Ole Miss standout Tim Elko is expected to make his High-Class A debut today for Winston-Salem (Chicago White Sox) at Aberdeen.

27 Jun

‘like a movie’

Ex-Mississippi State star Jordan Westburg stood in the batter’s box for his first big league at-bat with both raindrops and chants of “Westy, Westy” cascading from above at Camden Yards in Baltimore. “It felt like something out of like a movie, or something that you dream, honestly,” he told mlb.com after Monday’s game, a 10-3 win over Cincinnati. Westburg walked (and later scored) in that first at-bat, picked up an RBI on a fielder’s choice grounder in his second and singled in his third. His debut was the lead story on MLB Network’s Quick Pitch. A first-round draft pick out of MSU in 2020, Westburg is the O’s No. 3-ranked prospect and was having a big year at Triple-A Norfolk before getting the call-up. He started at second base — where he made a slick play — and hit seventh in the order. … Westburg wasn’t the only Mississippi product to get a promotion on Monday. Detroit has moved former Biloxi High standout Colt Keith, its No. 1 prospect and the No. 43 overall (per mlb.com), to Triple-A Toledo. The 21-year-old third baseman is expected to debut on Wednesday at Columbus. Keith hit .325 with 14 homers and 50 RBIs at Double-A Erie and helped the club win a first-half championship. He also has been chosen to play in the All-Star Futures Game in Seattle on July 8. (Other Mississippians who have played in that game include Billy Hamilton, Hunter Renfroe, Nathaniel Lowe, Dakota Hudson, Ethan Small and Matt Wallner.) … Who’ll be next among Mississippians in the minors to move up the ladder? Possibly Blaze Jordan, the slugger from DeSoto Central who is currently at High-Class A Greenville in the Boston system. Jordan, 20, is hitting .328 with 10 homers and 47 RBIs in his first full season at Greenville, where he finished 2022. Red Sox GM Chaim Bloom recently said of the team’s No. 10 prospect, “(H)e’s definitely got our attention.” And then there’s Tim Elko, the Ole Miss product who is batting .297 with 17 homers and 57 RBIs at Low-A Kannapolis in the Chicago White Sox’s chain. Elko, at 24, is a little old for this level and seemingly deserves a bump up.

06 Jun

handing out awards

The big prize was, of course, the regional championship, which Southern Miss secured on Monday by overpowering Penn 11-7 at Auburn, Ala. Fittingly, Dustin Dickerson, the junior shortstop from Laurel, was the winner of the Auburn Regional’s Most Outstanding Player award. He went 8-for-22 with four home runs and eight RBIs. He belted a huge three-run shot in Monday’s finale. The Golden Eagles dominated the all-tournament team, with six players making the list: Tanner Hall, Rodrigo Montenegro, Nick Monistere, Danny Lynch and Carson Paetow in addition to Dickerson. (Somehow, there just wasn’t room on the 11-man squad for Tate Parker, Will Armistead or Justin Storm.) USM (45-18) now waits to learn if it will be rewarded with a Super Regional at Taylor Park, where it set attendance records this year. … Elsewhere in the NCAA Tournament, former Madison Central star Braden Montgomery was named to the Stanford Regional all-tourney team; he homered for the Cardinal in Monday’s clincher. Former USM pitcher Hurston Waldrep, now at Florida, made the Gainesville Regional all-tourney team for the champion Gators, and USM alum Will McGillis, a grad transfer at South Carolina, made the all-tournament team for the Columbia Regional champion Gamecocks. … In MLB, Mississippi State alum Nathaniel Lowe was the star of the day for Texas, smacking a walk-off single as the red-hot Rangers beat St. Louis 4-3. It was the fourth career walk-off hit for Lowe, who went 2-for-5 to raise his average to .283. … Former State standout Justin Foscue, now in the Rangers’ minor league chain, and USM product Matt Wallner, a Minnesota prospect, were named to MLB Pipeline’s Prospect Team of the Week on Monday. Foscue posted a 1.521 OPS for Triple-A Round Rock last week. Wallner batted .423 with three homers for Triple-A St. Paul; he was also named the International League’s player of the week. … Colt Keith, the former Biloxi High star, was named the Double-A Eastern League’s player of the month for May after hitting .374 with five homers and 27 RBIs for Erie in the Detroit organization. … On the local front, Mississippi Braves outfielder Landon Stephens and left-hander Luis De Avila were selected as the Farm Bureau player and pitcher of the week after the Double-A club’s series at Birmingham. The M-Braves begin a six-game series against rival Biloxi tonight at Trustmark Park in Pearl.

17 May

something completely different

The line in the box score, 6-3-6-7, is an eye-opener. The details are flat-out amazing. Colt Keith, the former Biloxi High star and current Detroit prospect, not only banged out six knocks but hit for the cycle with two home runs for Double-A Erie on Tuesday night. Recently ranked as the No. 87 prospect in the minors by MLB Pipeline, Keith, 21, is in his third pro season after being drafted in the fifth round by the Tigers in 2020. A lefty-hitting third baseman, the 6-foot-2, 211-pound Keith is batting .300 with seven homers and 28 RBIs this season, .294 with 18 and 91 over 144 games for his career. Not surprisingly, he told milb.com that Tuesday’s performance was the No. 1 highlight of his career to date. As an milb.com story duly notes, no major league player has homered twice while cycling on a six-hit, seven-RBI night. He completed the cycle with a single in his fifth at-bat and also singled in his final AB. “I felt pretty invincible going up there …,” he said. Keith moved to Biloxi from Arizona in 2019 and was the state’s Gatorade player of the year that season. He was an Arizona State commit before the Tigers picked him in the curtailed 2020 draft and offered him a $500,000 bonus.

13 May

crushing it

Your first thought as you watch the highlight footage of Brent Rooker’s walk-off home run on Friday night is, “Wow, he got all of that one.” Rooker, the ex-Mississippi State slugger, crushed a line drive to left field at Oakland Coliseum for a three-run homer that gave the A’s a 9-7 win in 10 innings against Texas. “It’s pretty close to as good and clean as I can hit a ball,” Rooker told mlb.com after his first career walk-off hit. “That one felt good.” How hard was it hit? Well, they measure such things these days, and according to Baseball Savant, the exit velocity of Rooker’s rocket was 110.7 mph. Impressive, yes, but not his hardest hit ball of 2023. He has a 112 on his ledger. The hardest hit ball by a Mississippian this year belongs to Austin Riley, the DeSoto Central High alum who plays for Atlanta. He has a 113.3 exit velo, a tick ahead of ex-MSU and current Los Angeles Angels star Hunter Renfroe’s 113.2. (Matt Olson’s 118.6 is the big league best.) At any rate, Rooker’s other numbers in this breakout season are also pretty impressive. He now has 11 homers, tied for the American League lead, and a .673 slugging percentage, which leads all of MLB. He is batting .319 with 29 RBIs for the woeful A’s, who have won just nine of 40 games. P.S. Props to ex-State standout J.P. France, who notched his first big league win for Houston, throwing 6 2/3 innings (three hits, one walk, one run) against the Chicago White Sox. He is 1-0 with a 0.77 ERA in two starts. … McComb native Corey Dickerson went 1-for-3 on a rehab assignment at Triple-A Rochester in Washington’s system. Dickerson has been on the injured list since April 2. … Detroit placed Spencer Turnbull on the IL. The Madison Central product, recently sent to the minors, joins a list of Mississippi-connected pitchers on the major or minor league IL that includes: Drew Pomeranz, Garrett Crochet, Dakota Hudson, Demarcus Evans, Ryan Rolison, Zac Houston, Gunnar Hoglund, Will Bednar and Landon Sims.

07 May

welcome back

The Mississippi Braves’ lineup got a little stronger on Saturday when Jesse Franklin V made his 2023 debut. Batting third at Pensacola’s Blue Wahoos Stadium, Atlanta’s No. 14-rated prospect struck out in his first two at-bats but homered to center in his third, possibly a good sign for a power hitter who missed more than a year after elbow surgery. Franklin, a 6-foot-1, 215-pound, lefty-swinging outfielder, is considered the top power hitter among the Braves’ prospects. Drafted in the third round out of Michigan in 2020, he blasted 24 homers at High-Class A Rome in his pro debut in 2021 and hit two more in 15 games for the Double-A M-Braves before going down with his injury in April of last year. He also stole 19 bases at Rome and got two bags last year, so he’s not a one-tool pony. Despite Franklin’s homer and another by veteran slugger Drew Lugbauer, the M-Braves lost 3-2 at Pensacola and fell to 9-17. They conclude their two-week road trip today and return to Trustmark Park on Tuesday. Franklin fortifies a lineup that also includes No. 13 prospect Cal Conley, off to a slow start; Justin Dean, a former Top 30 prospect who played center field for the 2021 Southern League title team; and Lugbauer, who has 51 homers in three years with the M-Braves. The M-Braves also have added No. 4 prospect AJ Smith-Shawver, a right-hander whose Double-A debut Friday was cut short by rain after two (shutout) innings. This team ought to get better. … At High-A Rome on Saturday, former Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College star Brandon Parker hit his first home run of 2023 and is batting .255 for the R-Braves. He hit 10 homers at Low-A Augusta last year. An NJCAA Division II player of the year at Gulf Coast, Parker, an outfielder, hit 38 bombs while at Perk. P.S. Props to J.P. France, the Mississippi State alum who threw five shutout innings for Houston against Seattle in his big league debut. … In something of a surprise move, Detroit optioned Spencer Turnbull to Triple-A Toledo today, presumably for some fine-tuning at a lower level. The Madison Central High alum has a 7.26 ERA over seven starts.

05 May

double exposure

A pair of former Mississippi high school standouts will be on center stage today and Saturday for MLB Network’s afternoon showcase games. George County High product Justin Steele, the National League ERA leader, starts today (1:20 p.m.) for the Chicago Cubs against Miami at Wrigley Field. Left-hander Steele is 4-0 with a 1.49 ERA (and a 0.96 WHIP) in six starts. He faced the Marlins in his last outing, getting a no-decision despite yielding just two runs in six innings. On Saturday (1:15 p.m.), Madison Central alumnus Spencer Turnbull will be on the bump for Detroit against St. Louis (and Adam Wainwright) at Busch Stadium. Turnbull, returning this season from almost two years on the shelf following arm surgery, is 1-4 with a 6.84 in six starts. The right-hander has lasted just four innings in each of his previous two outings. Before getting hurt in May 2021, he was 4-2 with a 2.88 and a no-hitter on his resume. P.S. Philadelphia has designated former Ole Miss star James McArthur for assignment. The right-hander, yet to make the big leagues in six pro seasons, has a 7.31 ERA in Triple-A this season. He’ll likely clear waivers and remain in the organization.